


Othering

by Sharadethia



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Marriage, Miscarriage, sordid pressures of being royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 14:28:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14813136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharadethia/pseuds/Sharadethia
Summary: Deona Cousland, now Deona Theirin, queen of Ferelden, returns to Castle Cousland for the first time since she escaped the massacre that changed her entire life. Pressure has mounted for the queen to produce an heir, and tensions reach unprecedented heights as Fergus' second wedding approaches.





	Othering

Deona wrapped her thick shawl tighter to her frame, her mind miles from her nearly-shivering body. Her thoughts were flitting across mountains and rivers and lakes as she considered the word she heard from Amaranthine; of the Orlesian warden and the massacre which had decimated the city. She had heard that, although Wynne had been residing in the city, the old healer had survived, for which Deona had praised the Maker at the foot of her bed for hours. She had heard that, although Oghren had fought like some man-turned-abomination, he had been felled like some common beast at the hands of darkspawn, for which Deona had mourned sincerely if not over-much. She had also heard that, although the Wardens had been decimated from the fierce horrors of battle, there still at least a handful Ferelden Wardens left, herself and her husband included, and the thought of her undefended country left an empty and writhing hole in her stomach.

  
“Love?”  
Alistair’s voice, laden with concern, brought Deona out of her ever-darkening mind.

  
Her husband sat across from her in the carriage, looking like a true king of Ferelden with his warm finery and relaxed but attentive posture. Deona met his gaze, her eyes almost shocked at the change of focus.

  
“Just worried,” Deona returned with a smile as dishonest and bright as the speeches she had recently given the people of Ferelden. Of course, her citizens did not know the falsity of her bravado, but her husband, with whom she spent an inordinate amount of time, could see through many of her acts, though not the most convincing and comforting ones. This, however, was a ruse not well hidden.

  
“About Highever? Your brother sounded so excited to have you visit.”

  
A new anxiety, one from which she had been distracting herself by obsessing about a different one much farther from home. Oh yes, Deona had remembered her excitement that night when she finally received Fergus’s letter which announced several various and sundry things in handwriting which, as could be determined by the degrees of legibility, betrayed different sorts of news, some of it the cause of anxiety, others excitement, and yet others boredom. The letter stated that, first and foremost, her brother was getting remarried, something which Deona had been unsure he would ever be able to do.

She knew well the deep love that he still bore for his long-passed, butchered, gentle first wife and son. Deona herself still mourned for them. She kept a sketch which she drew of them, with all of her limited talent, in a chest which she frequented which contained things that she and Alistair kept out of reverence and sentimentality- their Grey Warden arms and armor, her Cousland shield, her family sword, his mother’s locket, the remains of the first rose he had given her, and many other assorted objects.

  
Fergus assured her in the same letter that his new wife was lovely, unassuming, and very kind, all things becoming of a bride. Deona had initially suspected with distaste that he was marrying due to political pressure, but from what the letter claimed, Fergus was freely making a very good choice of partner. Alira,whom he described as beautiful and delicate, was the daughter of a bann, and therefore from good breeding. More importantly, as delicately discovered by Leliana as a favor to Deona, Alira was truly in love with Fergus.

  
Her brother also spoke of less exciting news: the repairs being made to their castle, the plights of those living in Highever, and of his concerns for Deona’s health. He made quite a deal, in fact, of her lack of an heir, dedicating a handful of paragraphs to his concerns and opinions. He said that he understood her need for independence, which was not entirely honest nor true, since he could never understand the responsibility of a mother; he was correct, though, in stating that the country needed security. He did not know, however, of the impossibility of his simple suggestion: that they merely start actively trying for an heir. He did not know of the taint that had spread deep into his sister’s veins, into her marrow, into her core. He did not know that Deona suspected she would never be able to have children, regardless of her concerns about autonomy and safety, and she had not bothered to enlighten him in her response to his letter.

  
“The last time I was here, I saw my father’s people slaughtered and said my final farewells to my parents,” Deona murmured, returning her gaze to the grey landscape and making sure that her attention remained there. “I still miss them everyday.”

  
Alistair, although it had taken him time to realize it for himself, was never one to sit still when someone near him was agitated, and so he took her hands into his own. Deona knew that there was something comfortable about his no-longer-calloused hands enveloping her cold skin, but the reassurance of touch was not enough to ease her tension and slowly growing anxiety.

  
“I was able to go back to Redcliffe,” he offered helpfully. “And I did just fine. I even saw the dog kennels I used to sleep in, and all I thought about was how nice and warm and dry it was!”

  
What sort of king Alistair would be was still unclear to their people, even if it was clear to Deona. He said things like what he had just proclaimed among mixed company, thinking his humor was equally received and understood across classes and races, and those that were not generous enough to learn who he was as a person genuinely suspected that Deona, with her now-steely eyes and her still-strong sword arm, was the master controlling Alistair’s strings. Regardless of what the suspicious, callous, or uninquiring thought, Alistair had proven himself relatively deft in politics so long as he had someone around to nudge him in the right direction, usually the direction that did not involve mentioning his enduring and endearing love of mabari or his strange upbringing and time with the Wardens.

  
“You’re very brave.”  
“Me? Brave? All I did was follow my fearless leader!”

  
Alistair let out a congenial laugh and rubbed the back of her hands with his thumbs. “You’re the one who stabbed a fire-breathing dragon. And if you could do that, you can definitely visit your brother for a few days and enjoy his wedding, which is supposed to be a happy time, you know. Like our wedding! Now that was a good time.”

  
Deona managed a wane smile, his contagious good-natured manner rubbing off onto her bleak thoughts, especially as she managed to remember at least one uplifting thing for the day.

“You were very drunk,” Deona fondly recalled. “Telling everyone who walked by that I was your wife, as if all of Ferelden didn’t already know.”

  
“You can’t blame me for wanting everyone to know that I married the most talented, beautiful, lovely woman in all of Thedas, can you?” Alistair asked, the memory of the night dancing hazily in his mind, lit by only the goldest of glows.

  
“I just think the guests found it more strange than endearing,” Deona said, shaking her head fondly. “But I don’t blame you. Perhaps you should have saved your praise for a different time, but...”  
Alistair’s face lit up in a manner which always preluded something that, as soon as it had been said, had the entire body of the Chantry shuddering without knowledge of why. The look, at least as of recently, had Deona’s stomach plummeting again.

  
“I thought I saved plenty of praise for after the wedding,” the king purred. The charming and playful smile which graced his face was a hideous mask to Deona now, now that any thought of the bedroom left her with nausea and palpitations and dark memories.

  
Before Alistair could realize the effect that his words had on his wife, the carriage stopped, and Deona was sure that she could not feel any more ill before she would actually retch. Fortunately, the wooden doors opened to stony courtyard in front of Castle Cousland, and Deona could let her husband attribute her behavior to whatever he pleased.

  
Her home had not changed at all, except that it was not bathed in blood like some part of Deona had expected. The insistent drizzling rain turned the rocky world quite dark, but the imposing figure of the castle remained the same, even if it was not so imposing to someone who had spent their childhood running about its corridors. Deona’s eyes were too busy wandering the walls of the familiar world to see the figures which approached.

  
“Deona!” was the first thing that the queen heard upon letting her booted feet hit the cobblestone.

  
_“Deona!” she could hear, the cry fractured from pain as her mother and father called out after her, after her pseudo-savior Duncan, most nights in her dreams._

  
The voice which called out to her, the one which reached her ears in the real world, the world where the Fade did not torment her every moment, was so much like her father’s that she expected to hear the endearment “pup” once more. But with the grace of a queen, Deona dragged her mind out of fantasy and the past and let her eyes settle on her brother, disguising her fractures with a delicate and detailed mask.

  
“Fergus!” she cried back as his arms enveloped her in a hug the sort of which she had not experienced in so long. It was not that she was unhappy to see him; rather, some part of her felt so happy to see him that she felt pain. No one but family could embrace her with such excitement and dedication, and it sent needles into Deona’s heart, hurting as much as it reassured.

  
Her brother had aged, Deona noted as Fergus began to speak, addressing his king formally and being actively discouraged from the activity by Alistair. His hair was not yet grey, but a few short years would see his hair salted. Wrinkles, which were starting at the corners of his eyes and his forehead, would soon reach his cheeks and chin. He wore his hair shorter than he had the last time Deona had seen him, at her own wedding, but his groomed facial hair remained in the same style as he had born it for the last number of years. He looked healthy, vibrant even, despite what he had experienced. It was obvious that he would live a natural and long life, and for that Deona was grateful; Fergus had suffered much, and he deserved as long a life to pursue happiness as he could attain.

  
As Fergus ushered his queen and king, his sister and his brother-in-law, into the castle in which Deona had once felt at home, she found things once familiar and comforting now repelling and inordinately disquieting. Sets of armor that Fergus had chased her around as a child no longer felt like friendly, stoic creatures but rather like cold and austere husks. The bier that contained a great and warming fire before which their mother had once read them books after court had ended was no longer irresistible but rather felt oppressive and too-warm. Every step brought her further into this Fade-like world of false similarity. The bittersweetness of her reunion with her home resonated tremulously in her body like some piece of rigid metal violently hit.

  
“-was a fine ride here, though I’m sure Deona would have liked to have ridden her own horse the entire way here,” Alistair said with a chuckle. When Deona did not agree with him, he cast a curious look at his wife. He wanted to know how she was faring but found himself unable to get a read on her expression.

  
“You didn’t bring your mabari?” Fergus asked his sister.

  
The day they had left, Alistair and her now fattening war-dog had begged for the animal to take part in their travels once again. Deona, however, had not wanted further stress put upon the trip, since she could feel her hair graying already from all the planning their lives constantly needed. Instead, they had left Dog behind with a number of juicy bones and promises of later adventures.

  
Deona shook her head with a small and sad smile, saying, “I didn’t know how he would react to seeing home again. I thought it might be better to let it lie.”

“How do _you_ feel about it?” Fergus asked softly. It was obvious that he cared for his sister, even if he did not know how to interact with her title, particularly around his brother-in-law, the king.

  
“There is nothing like coming home,” Deona insisted, managing to find a truthful and positive way to describe the tumult of emotions with which she was desperately trying to grapple. “Do you remember when mother used to read to us in here? And she always chose the worst stories...”

  
The memory served as a lure, both for conversation and for connection to the brother she was not likely to see very many more times in the rest of her irrevocably shortened life. Deona explained to her husband that their mother liked to read romances which neither child had an interest in. The chivalry, their mother seemed to think, was something that was wholesome and complimented their education with weapons, but neither wanted to hear of such adult things at such a tender age. Alistair, in turn, shared tales about the stories templars would tell of chivalric love, not wary at all of paring his language, and this endeared Fergus to the man more than most other things could have. Deona noted that her brother, who had never shied away from bawdy language and the occasional titillating story, got along well with her husband who had never truly learned high society manners until recently, and even then they did not become him.

  
“I’m feeling tired,” Deona eventually interjected. “Don’t stop your stories on account of me, but I need to rest. What room should I head to?”

  
Fergus for a second looked sorrowful, but he recovered himself quickly and offered her the use of their parents room. He did not need to state why he would not sleep in the rooms proper to his position. Deona also had a suspicion that he did not sleep in what used to be his rooms, the rooms that he had once shared with the woman he first loved, the rooms in which they had been slaughtered, but she understood the pain that he felt. Deona, after encouraging the men to continue telling their tales and making their ribald jokes, walked down the familiar path to the room that had once been more sacred in her mind than any chantry.

  
At least, she thought to herself, my parents were not slain in their beds.

  
Some dark part of her thought that the manner of her parents’ deaths was perhaps a worse fate than being killed comfortably, though. She had no idea what happened once she turned her back on her kin and kind, but she knew the outcome of the event well. How long had Deona believed she was the last of the Couslands? Perhaps her parents were given swift deaths. Perhaps they were killed like dogs. Perhaps they were tortured. She did not know, and nothing she had learned from Howe’s estate or men had given her the closure she so desperately sought.

  
As she neared her parent’s room, she passed her old rooms as well as the ones her brother used to reside in. Due to a compelling curiosity, which Deona justified to herself as her queenly right, she opened the door to her old bedroom only to find that it was currently occupied by items she knew to be in Fergus’ possession. Her heart skipped a beat, and, looking like some thief in the night suddenly faced with sudden reminder of his morals, she wheeled around, slammed the door shut behind her, and put her back to the wood as if it could keep back all of the regret and sorrow threatening to drown her. Even though she knew better than to do so, she walked numbly across the hall to where she had last seen her nephew and sister-in-law, laying in pools of their still-warm blood. There were no servants about to see her. The only person who could know of her prying was herself.

  
Deona opened the door as slowly and carefully as she could. What she found inside should not have surprised her, but it did nonetheless. It was a normal, unused room, long-since refurnished. Some part of her wanted to search the floor for the blood-stains she had last seen there, but time had wrecked its havoc, and it was readily seen that there were none of the dark marks that Deona thought would still exist, burned into the room as it had been burned into her memory.

  
It took Deona a long moment to compose herself before she left the room. When she managed to take the few steps to the hallway, she felt that her fingers were quite numb and her heart seemed to become tighter and ever-more-painful with every beat. There were tears of mourning and loneliness, tears for the fate of the Couslands, at the corners of her eyes which threatened to fall for the first time since the first night Deona had spent without a family, sobbing silently until she felt that she would die, racked with weeping but refusing to let Duncan hear her heart breaking into two.  
Deona wiped away the almost-tears with a dismissive brush of her finely embroidered sleeve and strode as confidentially as she could to her parents’ rooms. They had once been a place where she could go as a child to escape nightmares, to find reassurance, and to find protection. Times had changed, however, and she knew that she was perhaps the only person in the world who could protect herself. Alistair, though dedicated and hard-working, was not her equal in sword-play and never had been, and all the guards and knights in Ferelden could hold a tournament to find their best and that champion would still not manage to be a considerable threat to the hardened woman who did her best to assure her people that she was still the tender-hearted woman they wanted. It was not that Deona was not charismatic and sweet when she needed to be, like she used to be. Rather, it was that the world had hardened some inner part of her heart, making it hard for her instinctively accommodating and appealing nature to come forward. Convincing society that she was someone she was not had at first been a fun game, but it had swiftly become the most painful of traps which she could have walked into. She had kept her pain from the world, and then eventually from her friends, then her husband, and now she struggled to keep her pain even from herself.  
As she walked through the door frame she had run in and out of for so many years, Deona felt herself losing control. The tears now stung violently, burning her eyes like some poison. Her body, exhausted from holding in pain and anxiety and fear and too many too-violent memories, shook uncontrollably, but she managed to shut the door behind her before collapsing to her knees on the floor and clutching at the edges of a rug nearby, the same rug that had been there since as long as she could remember.

  
~~~

  
“Did you rest well, love?” Alistair asked Deona as soon as she had entered the room which he and Fergus has been talking a few hours later. She looked much better to him, with her cheeks flushed and her body so much less tense, but he was unsure of the answer until she flashed him one of her small smiles so sweet that it made his heart skip a beat.

  
“Are the rooms acceptable?” Fergus asked of his sister, carefully examining her face for whatever emotion would accompany her response.

  
“You didn’t change anything,” Deona noted softly.

  
Alistair had little idea what she meant. He knew that it was not an accusation so much as something that surprised her, but that was the limit of his understanding of the situation.

  
“It isn’t my room to change,” her brother said simply. “I was more asking about whether or not it would be good enough for royalty.”

  
Without hesitation, Alistair reassured, “We’ve spent so many nights on the road running from darkspawn that anything you have that isn’t in the Deep Roads is perfect.”

  
The levity which Alistair exuded restored peace to the room, and Deona soon roped Fergus into speaking about his bride-to-be and the wedding which was only a sunrise away.

~~~

  
Deona had been informed years ago that Grey Wardens were almost entirely sterile. It was almost a relief at the time, at a time when everyone she had loved had been killed, and she wanted nothing to do with the continuation of life and death in the world. Deona had been grateful for this fact when she lay with a bastard-prince when there was no discernable future for either of them. She now hated herself for having felt that relief as she sat across from her brother, speaking in careful and quite words.

  
“I don’t want to speak about this,” Deona insisted with all of the queenly force she could manage. Her tone, however, did not deter the man who has known her since she was a babe.

  
“Deona, you can’t pretend that this isn’t important,” her brother insisted.

  
They sat in the room that was formerly hers and now his, sitting on opposite sides of a simple table, on simple chairs, having discussed much business with one last conversation left so far unspoken, the way that Deona wanted it to remain.

  
“I’m pretending nothing, Fergus,” Deona said sternly. “I simply don’t want to discuss my personal affairs.”

  
“Your personal affairs, in this case, are entirely public. You have been queen for some time now, and I’ve heard many people questioning after your health, both politely and impolitely.”

  
“Impolitely? Are people asking if a former-templar doesn’t know where to put it?” Deona demanded. Her words were harsh, bordering on cruel, but she too had heard these questions. She had heard rumors about her husband, about herself, and about countless unnamed, imaginary, pregnant mistresses. She had heard so many carefully worded questions spoken to Alistair, which were brushed off with jokes and laughter. She had heard so many carefully worded questions spoken to their advisors, which were brushed off with distractions of varying quality. She had heard so many carefully worded questions offered to herself, which she brushed off with careful words of reassurance.

  
“There are some that think that, perhaps,” Fergus said. He was not about to let discomfort distract him from the conversation in which he felt someone needed to engage his sister, and since she had no parents to insist upon this, Fergus felt that the unfortunate responsibility fell to him as the oldest man in their family. “But the point remains that you need an heir. Have you met with a physician? A mage?”  
“Fergus, this is not-”

  
“Deona, you can’t ignore this. You seem to know what’s happening. Tell me.”

“Fergus...”

  
“Does he not sleep with you?”

  
“Fergus, no-”

  
“Does he put it-”

  
“Fergus, stop!”

  
Deona found her hand hitting the table without ever realizing that she was guiding it, until the noise rang in her ear. Her father occasionally had done such things in times of great pressure, but he had been so careful to restrain his anger around his family. Deona had never done such a thing until now, perhaps only because at other times of stress she had had a blade in hand.

  
“Grey Wardens are infertile,” Deona eventually conceded in the softest of whispers.

  
“So both of you will never have children?” came the inevitable question after a long moment’s hesitation. “The kingdom will never have an heir?”

  
And Deona inevitably thought of Morrigan and the child that she had convinced Alistair to have with her. She thought of the night that had guaranteed their survival once they reached the archdemon. She remembered the chill she had felt in her soul when Alistair had disappeared into Morrigan’s bed. She remembered when Alistair came back to her bed, when he reminded her how much he loved her and she reminded him how much she loved him before the day that they had thought would bring their death. She was sure that Alistair had one child, a child which could never be his heir, a child that was not hers.  
“We’ve tried.” The words came out from her mouth brokenly. “We’ve tried for so long, but...”

“I’m sorry,” Fergus offered his words of apology with both anxiety and sorrow for his sister. “Is it impossible or simply unlikely? Do you know?”

  
“I’ve...” Deona’s voice broke before she could continue, now whispering. “I’ve lost two.”

  
She did not cry. She had tried not to cry either of the times that she had begun bleeding too much too late. She had not let anyone know, either. She had simply passed her indispositions off as illnesses. She told herself now that she should have known better than to hope for the most unlikely of events.

  
“Does he know?”

  
The silence that followed informed Fergus of a number of things. First, he now knew that his sister was not as much of an open book as he had once thought. Second, he understood something about the dichotomy of joviality and somberness between the couple; with Deona holding her sorrows so close to her chest, of course her husband could not react. Finally, he understood why his sister had not pursued methods he knew she would have considered, alternate ways to have royal children.

  
“Surely you should tell him.”

  
Fergus now spoke from the position of a once-father. He remembered how he had felt upon hearing that Oriana was pregnant. He had stood by her side as much as he could, and her pain was his until the child was born. He could not imagine what he would have felt if Oriana had been in Deona’s position, but the thought of a man not knowing he had children, even possible children, seemed like a sort of hollow pain no one should have to bear.

“It would ruin him, Fergus. He wants children so badly. He’s such a happy man. I don’t want to get his hopes up only to have them crushed.”

  
“He deserves to know,” her brother said solemnly. He understood what his sister was saying, and he admired how strong she was. She had saved their world. She had survived a battle which no one else in their family had. She had earned her position, but she was often more strong than she needed to be. She also under-estimated the strength of others in her fits of stubbornness.

  
After a long moment which rested between them, after a long moment in which the night’s silence began to encroach on their minds, Deona gave a small, sad sigh.  
“I know,” she murmured to the floor.

  
~~~

  
Deona had been considering how she could tell Alistair for some time. As she walked to her parent’s bedroom, leaving Fergus to think about his own future, she thought of what would be her brother’s second wedding night, about her own wedding night, and about her body’s betrayal. Perhaps she could find Morrigan, and she could beg for her to fix this monstrous blood in her which rejected generation. She trusted Morrigan, at least insofar as she trusted Morrigan to be Morrigan, and Morrigan was the only person who she would allow to play with the composition of her body to such a degree. Deona had spoken to Wynne, who had nothing to offer but medicinal suggestions and prayers. Deona dared not ask others to assist her, those who did not know her from before that final battle, because words slipped from lips too easily nowadays when all minds were not overshadowed with terror. She did not trust their advisors, their “friends,” not even her own husband, in this regard. She wished she had her father, with his warm, inviting arms and kind words, to whom she could run and clutch; he always had advice for her, was always there to support her. Even her mother might have been a reassuring presence. But here Deona walked alone through what had once been her home, one hand unconsciously pressed on her abdomen.

  
As she reached the door to the room she would be staying in, she paused, listening. She heard shuffling inside of the room, presumably Alistair preparing for bed. Her pause was tactical, but not just to ascertain what the man she loved was doing without her; she needed a moment to clear her head, as she had managed to for so long, of her anxieties about the Theirin future and her barren, shortened life. Pulling together her compassion from out of her sorrows and fear, she became another person. Deona was once again a queen, a Cousland, a warrior, a war hero, as beautiful as she was charismatic.  
Her war-beaten hands turned the knob, and she found her husband sitting at the one desk in the room, looking more than happy to be distracted from whatever politicking he had been attempting in her absence.

  
“Was your talk good?” he asked, standing up and striding over to embrace Deona.

  
“Fergus and I spoke of… a number of difficult things,” Deona admitted, brushing off the issue with a small shake of her head. She latched her hands around Alistair’s neck, enjoying the feel of his short hair bristling lighting against her skin, nearly tickling. “But all is well, and I think he will be more than happy with his bride.”

  
“Well, that’s good,” Alistair declared solemnly. He brought his hands to rest at his wife’s hips, some part of him still surprised after all this time with how much slimmer and fragile she seemed without her body covered inch-by-inch in some metal which she had most likely skinned off some corpse. It was not that she looked less of a warrior now, he felt the need to justify to himself; he was assured she was only more terrifying in battle nowadays, since she still trained in the yard rigorously. There was something, however, about how much more human she seemed when she did not have a bulky shell protecting her from all worldly blows.

  
“I was thinking about our wedding more,” Deona admitted after a moment, a small smile gracing her plush lips. “And about how you had almost had too much to drink...”

  
Alistair, immediately on the defensive, opened his mouth to argue, but Deona simply pulled him into a deep kiss by entangling her lithe fingers as best she could into his sheared hair and wrenching him down to her. Alistair, always one for being commanded, was more than happy to give into her demands, and he returned the kiss like a man begging to be complimented.

  
As Deona ran out of breath and stopped, she gave one order.

  
“Bed.”

  
~~~

  
When Deona walked into Alira’s room, one hand on her sword hilt and the other holding a package wrapped in paper, the other woman dropped to her knees, dropped her head, and greeted her as majesty, which Deona simply greeted with a smile.

  
“I’m here as your future sister, not your monarch,” Deona reassured, offering her brother’s bride a hand to help her to her feet.

  
Alira wore her finest, the best that could be afforded by a bann, and much finer than the common folks would ever wear, but it was certainly not something that a teryn would offer his daughter off in. Deona had suspected that Alira’s wardrobe might not be appropriate and thusly had dipped into her personal coffers to prepare a dress which Leliana had been so helpful in procuring the measurements for.

  
As an aside, Deona owed much to Leliana, to whom she frequently sent letters not only for pleasure but also for sensitive business. The Warden Queen had asked her dear bard to find out who Alira was, once Fergus had mentioned his interest in her, and Leliana had not disappointed. Not only had she found her way into Alira’s confidence after only a short time, but she easily intercepted private letters which assured Deona that Alira was marrying Fergus for only the best of reasons: love. Upon hearing that an engagement was considered, before Leliana had to return to her own interests, she had garnered the measurements of the bann’s daughter, once again at the behest of the queen.

  
“Of course, your majesty,” Alira said, giving a curtsy and still not quite making eye contact.

  
“You may call me Deona when there aren’t politicians in the room, Alira,” Deona urged, giving the other woman one of those small, devilish, private smiles which women often exchanged when speaking of the secrets of their husbands.

  
“Deona,” Alira addressed after returning the contagious smile, “what brings you here?”

  
“Well, dear sister, I spoke to my husband and convinced him to increase my allowance for the month, so I could procure something for you. It’s not traditional, I suppose, for the groom’s sister to interfere, but I got more finery than I expected and wanted on my wedding day, and I thought I might extend the courtesy to you as well.”

  
With that, the grey-eyed Deona handed the doe-eyed Alira the package which, truth be told, was something that Deona could only hope was not offensive, but if there was one thing the Grey Warden queen could do well, it was convince people that her kindness was genuine, even in the rare instances that it was not. Alira unwrapped the gift gingerly, as though what was inside might tear upon contact with skin. As she parted the parchment paper, her eyes widened. She saw the pure blue of the dress, the delicate trim, and the embroidery, all of the highest quality she had ever seen.  
“Thank you,” she whispered, reverently turning her eyes from the fabric to her soon-to-be-sister. “And his majesty!”

  
“We both bless your marriage, and I certainly hope you find my brother suitable,” Deona said with the tenderest of smiles for this woman who, no more than few years younger than her, seemed to be so much her junior. “He may be overbearing at times, and sometimes rather obscene, but he always has his heart in the right place.”

  
“Fergus has been nothing but the most gentlemanly,” Alira assured, trying to keep from staring at the fantastical gift which sat in her arms, too shy to admire it further with the gift-giver in the room.  
“I should hope so,” Deona said, a joking hint of threat in her voice. “Now, I’ve made sure you have more time to prepare for the ceremony. Maker bless you.”

  
“Maker bless you as well, your… Deona,” Alira returned while giving a deep bow.

  
Deona inclined her head more than was normally permitted, finding herself thoroughly endeared to this young woman whom she had never met before. As Deona left the woman’s room, she brought her head high and prepared to face another crowd which she could only hope would be smaller than the one from her own wedding.

~~~

  
_The blackness of night had long since engulfed the purple and orange hues of twilight, and now fires, decoratively placed along the stone walls, were the only thing by which the court could see. In the large throne room, where nobles and other assorted guests milled about chuckling and gossiping and murmuring, Deona stood next to Arl Eamon, speaking of the devastation the south would have to recover from. A wedding was supposed to be a happy day, but Deona, always her mother’s daughter, could not keep herself from thoughts of how to deal with that for which she was responsible. The Grey Warden, now queen, wore a dress like the sort she had imagined from childhood. It was the deepest of blues, a shade which had been chosen without her input, a shade which she suspected was chosen to remind everyone of her Otherness. It was not that the dress did not look good on her; rather, it was that it made her the most readily spotted person in the entire capital._

Alira stood before the priestess, next to Fergus, her eyes locked onto Deona’s brother with an enraptured expression. Deona knew the look. She had seen it at most noble weddings. The woman had been bred all of her life to be married off to someone, someone of high status, her family hoped, but she had never expected to find love. Yet here Alira was, being wed in the eyes of the Maker to the man she loved above all others. Deona, standing next to Alistair, next to the priestess, could see Alira’s green eyes glittering with so much hope for a future that Deona would not be able to achieve. Soon Alira would be round with child, with a Cousland heir…

_“That’s my wife!” Alistair pointed out to the also-drunk noble who was at his side. A fond, not quite yet embarrassed smile, flitted its way across Deona’s face, as she nodded her recognition to Alistair. “She killed the archdemon single-handedly! Climbed up its sodding neck!”_   
_Arl Eamon, surely still seeing Alistair in the moment as the child he used to be, shook his head fondly._   
_“That’s the third time,” Deona whispered to him, still grinning._   
_“Perhaps,” Eamon suggested softly, “it’s time for him to retire before he manages to get around to a fourth.”_   
_“Fourth barrel or fourth retelling of how I killed a dragon? Because I wouldn’t mind hearing about myself more.” Deona’s words were filled with a wicked wit she only ever let run wild when she imbibed. Carefully calculated charisma took conscious thought which she could not manage at the moment. Worse yet, she had spent her childhood sharpening her tongue, so biting wit slipped out easily at times like this._   
_“I believe those two items are intimately correlated,” Eamon returned, taking a delicate sip from a goblet which had been filled with “medicinally treated mead,” the only thing he was supposed to be drinking during the celebration, at the behest of Isolde._

 Fergus’ laughter was bold, booming, and it filled the room. He cracked his mug of beer against another man’s, one hand holding the mug as if his life depended on it and the other against his sides which hurt from how long he had been guffawing. Alistair, barely standing next to him, gave some entertaining commentary, which created another round of laughter among the men. Alira, however, drunk only on ecstasy itself, stood next to Deona, surrounded by other women who were speaking in hushed and giggling tones of the next part of the ceremony.  
“He’ll know what he’s doing,” a young minor noblewoman whispered scandalously to Alira. “That’ll be good for you.”  
“Bea,” Alira shushed, looking aghast but not offended.  
Deona, not wishing to hear speculation on the state of her brother’s private affairs, found herself staring at one of the distant walls.

_Deona giggled hysterically at the look of absolute amusement on her… husband...’s face. Alistair, being pushed forward by crowds of rowdy young men, was clearly entertained, if not overwhelmed. It occurred to Deona that he probably had not attended many weddings in his time and thus had not been aware of the chaotic energy with which the younger companions of the couple were supposed to urge them to the bedroom. Leliana was literally pushing Deona forward, whispering naughty ideas into Deona’s ear, words which could barely be heard over the whooping and hollering of the other guests. As the small crowds surged together, uniting Deona and Alistair into what was more of a collision than an embrace, they were finally pushed up to the door of the bedroom which was now theirs._

Alira tentatively placed a hand on Deona’s shoulder, her fingers almost trembling. The queen was confused to see that there was concern on her now-sister’s face.  
“Deona?” Alira asked at a whisper, putting her lips just short of her queen’s ear. “Does it really hurt?”  
Of course she was anxious. Deona remembered the whispers and stories she had heard throughout the castle about the secret blood shed on wedding nights; she, however, had had the benefit of dealing with bloodshed ordinarily, so growing up she was not concerned about what would happen once her father found her a suitable husband, one which she was sure to approved of.  
Deona gave an insistent shake of her head.  
“The moment it hurts, you tell my brother, and he will stop,” Deona assured.  
This was the night that all young noble girls thought about with anxiety and anticipation. This was the night that would guarantee their political safety and that of their family. It was the night that their new lives began. It would be the night that, at least theoretically, they would first come to know a man. Deona had thought similarly once.

_“It’s a good thing we’ve done this before,” Alistair slurred, watching from the chair which Deona had pushed him into, as she stepped out of the deep blue dress she had been locked up in and sauntered over to him, her head buzzing with alcohol and her veins warm with arousal. In the golden light, Alistair looked so much like he had all those night by the fire that Deona had spent agonizing over her interest in him. He was not the same person as he had been then, however. Now he even sat with more dignity. It made Deona want to sit on his lap and torment him even more. He was the crown monarch, but he had also been her superior in the Wardens, technically. They had their own, unique hierarchy._

As Fergus and Alira were being pressed down the halls and into their bedchamber, Alistair fell into step next to Deona, who had taken it upon herself to act as Alira’s buffer from the chaos which was surely too much for her already anxious state. Alistair, seeing Deona’s determination, managed to added another body between the new bride, grinning widely at the jubilant atmosphere. Once the couple had been barricaded into their room by the sheer mass of people in the small hall, Alistair put his back to the door and began to usher people back to the hall where the dregs had not yet been drunk.

  
“Go on,” he encouraged, managing to sound kingly even amongst the almost Bacchic revelry. “I’m sure the couple doesn’t need more encouragement!”

  
There were cheers and jeers and laughter, but the people did begin to disperse. Deona shot him a grateful glance and, once the last of the stragglers left the hall, let out a deep breath. She could still feel Alira’s agitation, clinging to her as the smell of a campfire clings to clothes.

  
“Do you have any idea how radiant you look?” Alistair asked his wife after walking up to her and putting a hand on her cheek. Deona, exhausted, leaned into the touch, and let out another calculated and long exhale with her eyes closed.

  
“I think I feel worse than after fighting darkspawn.”

  
Alistair’s laugh was loud enough that Deona was positive her brother and Alira could hear it even through their thick wooden door.

  
“I wish fighting darkspawn had been like that!” he guffawed. “Jokes and drink and warm fires? I would have signed up as a Warden much more readily!”

  
“Oh, as if there weren’t jokes and drink and warm fires when we were fighting,” Deona countered.

  
“We had plenty of jokes about dying, that’s true. And if I remember correctly, the only drink we got to enjoy was what we pried from Oghren’s grubby little hands after he’d passed out, and the only reason the fire felt warm was because it was always cold and raining.”

  
“You’re just getting soft,” Deona accused.

  
Alistair simply chuckled and took her hands into his own.

  
“It’s late,” he offered, seeing her state of late-night stupor. “We should sleep.”

  
~~~

  
_Deona was running._

  
_Her blonde hair was no longer pulled back the way she ordinarily wore it; her pounding footsteps and panic-shaken movements had long-since wrenched it out of the knot she had bound it in, and now it was fluttering behind her, dark curls made darker by the murky world around her._

  
_Deona was running._

  
_Her blue and silver armor, griffon-etched and battle-worn, was too heavy for her corpse-like body. The metal bit into her flesh, bruising and scratching and cutting. Her blood was staining the fine armor an unsightly burgundy._

  
_Deona was running._

  
_Her booted feet could only carry her so far. Her feet felt as though she had worn off all of the skin from her heels and toes and the pads. Her bones themselves wished to slide out of her form and free themselves from the unrelenting, constant, rhythmic force of one panicked foot hitting the floor right after the other. The noise of her boots hitting the smooth and polished stone ground was the only thing that filled the air. Not even her breath made a sound in the world of bitter cold._

  
_Deona was dying._

  
_She was running from something behind her which she could not see, no matter how many times she ripped her head around to look over her shoulder. It was over-bearing, large, monstrous, and shrouded in the shadow which blanketed this torment of a world._

  
_Suddenly, a burning pain burst in her stomach._

  
_She looked down in horror, her feet failing to carry her any further, as she stared down at her massive stomach. Underneath her skin, there was supposed to be another human being, one for whom she would become irrevocably responsible. A human who would one day rule Ferelden. Deona stared at the top of her stomach, noticing that she was not wearing armor. She was wearing a simple undyed linen dress which fell uncomfortably and loosely about her body._

_The pain speared through her, hitting just above her pelvis._

  
_Deona collapsed, clutching her hands to her stomach, screaming. She knew she should have been screaming to the Maker to save her child, but the pain was so great. She was simply screaming. She needed it to end if she wanted to keep living, if she wanted to retain her sanity. She wanted to die as the pain began to take hold, unrelenting, leaving her body a trembling mess as the shadow behind her approached. And it began to shake her and shake her and_

“Deona!” Alistair called.

  
She found herself no longer in the misty, dark world in which she had been twitching moments before, but rather in a bedroom that had, in her childhood, been the peak of both emotional and physical comfort. Her husband was propped up on one elbow, a hand on her bare shoulder, his eyes lit with the light of concern.

  
Deona was going to reassure him that it was simply a nightmare which had disturbed their sleep before the pain found its way into her waking body, and she instantly curled forward, both hands clutching at her no-longer-rounded-too-flat stomach. The dragging-stabbing pain was enough to render her speechless for a moment, but as the first wave faded, Deona steeled herself for a long night, like two other long nights before. She wanted to curse her body, to punish this traitorous form, but her mind was pulled out of itself by Alistair’s worried and hurried tone.

“Deona?” he asked, his eyes now narrowed on where her hands were placed. “What’s happening?”

  
Bitter tears in her eyes, Deona choked out a grunt of pain as another contraction seized her, and it was all she could do to grab at the fabric in which she had been so comfortable not long ago. Her legs felt wet, a warm wet, which was soaking through the fabric around her. Alistair remained frozen still as his tired mind began to gather the pieces of information, as he began to understand what was happening.  
As soon as he comprehended the situation, his eyes growing wide in horror, he began to panic.

  
“I’ll call for a healer,” he said, ripping the sheets off himself and tearing out of the bed. In removing the fabric from himself, it became obvious that his wife was shaking in a pool of her own blood.

  
“It’s too late,” Deona whispered through gritted teeth. “They can’t know.”

  
Alistair, his thoughts whirling about, feeling too many things to sort out, shook his head.

  
“No, someone can fix this!”

“Shush!” Deona insisted. “No one can know!”

  
She pushed herself off of the bed to keep Alistair from charging out of their room and announcing to the entire world that his wife was unable to do the one job her country demanded of her. She did not make it more than one step from the bed before her blood-drained body collapsed, and Alistair was forced move from the door in order to rush to her side.

  
“Maker, what do I do? What should we do?”

  
“Take me to the chamberpot,” Deona instructed, trying once again to push herself up.

  
The first time she had felt this pain, she had known she was pregnant, and she had even allowed herself excitement. Alistair had been gone, touring Redcliff to boost morale and further the relief efforts which Deona had secured for the Arl not long before, just after their wedding. Deona had been planning to tell him once he returned home, and she had been so excited to see the look on his face when he learned he was to be a father. She had imagined blonde, almost brunette, children. She imagined blissful motherhood and the innocent giggles of babes. She had imagined something which was not meant to be. She had woken up to pain unlike anything she had ever felt. It was nothing like the pain of a broken bone or a slicing wound. No, this was something that her body had devised to rid itself of something. She had woken up and sat in shock for some time. Then, she had begun to cry. Then, she crawled to the chamberpot and sat for hours as her body purified itself, as she bled out her hope and excitement for the future.

  
The second time, she had known she was pregnant, but she had kept her condition a secret. She had handled the loss once before. She was hardened, and she knew what to expect, so she did not tell Alistair. When the first cramps blazed inside of her, not too long after first realizing she was with child, Deona had calmly excused herself the conversation she was having with one of her maids and locked herself inside of a servants’ latrine in the garden. She had made sure her dress remained spotless, free of blood and muck, because she had seen to it that only she would clean up to avoid any of her secrets becoming known. The first time she had spent so long making sure no one in the castle would see the bloodied sheets and the contents of the chamberpot. Now, the sins of her body were cleanly hidden in the nipping air of spring and a hole in the ground. Alistair had eventually heard of her indisposition, and Deona had informed him that she was ill. Once the bleeding was under control, Deona had asked to be left alone, and as she lay in a spare room, she had found that she could not cry.

  
This time, she had not even known. Her body had not had a regular cycle since her Joining, and the pregnancy would have only just been showing signs. Perhaps, if she had really been looking, she might have noticed how her stomach had begun to bulge slightly, how she had become more emotional, how she had become so prone to stress.

  
Alistair steadied Deona and led her to the small attached room where the chamberpot sat. Deona dropped her bloodied nightdress from her body and sat over the pot. As Deona gritted her teeth and unbidden tears of pain slid down her face, Alistair gripped her hand so tightly that it hurt her bones, but the crushing pain was a distraction, as welcome as pain could ever be.

  
“Maker,” he whispered, his voice breaking.

  
“It’s going to be alright,” Deona said to him, as she had been saying to herself since the first time she had undergone this torture.

  
“No, it’s not. You were going to be a mother…” He paused, the air putrefying with his grief. The next words he spoke seemed to fall from his lips, unbidden. It was the logical consequence of the first statement, but it was almost unimaginable.“I was going to be a father.”

  
“It’s going to be alright.”

  
“Did you know you were pregnant?”

  
Deona shook her head, her blonde hair now clinging to her face with the sweat of pain. She dug her fingers into her still well-muscled thighs and looked into the darkness across from her, willing her mind to drift from her body for blessed peace.

  
“Maker,” Alistair swore, taking his hand from Deona’s and standing up. He began to pace in the small room, both hands running through his hair, muttering to himself. The sound of his bare feet rhythmically hitting the stone floor was the only noise other than their mingled breathing. “Maker.”

  
Deona was sure that Alistair was imagining the same thing she had considered herself not so long ago: the toddling, the first words, the sleepless nights holding a crying babe. When she first found out she was with child and excited beyond measure, Deona had considered offering that they name any son they had Maric. If they had a daughter, she secretly wished to name her Eleanor.

  
“Surely there’s something...” Alistair repeated, the numbness of this strange grief having not yet settled fully into his heart.

  
“This will be over soon enough,” Deona assured him.

  
The words were broken, tired, and sure of themselves.

  
“What?” Alistair asked, his brows knitting together as his normally unsuspicious mind began to latch onto those long-suffering and assured words.

  
In that moment, their eyes met in the darkness, and Alistair knew Deona’s most bitterly guarded secret. Without thinking, simply acting on reflex, he whispered brokenly,  
“How many times?”

  
Deona had nothing to hold back anymore. As her body convulsed under a new, violent contraction, she spit out the words.

  
“Twice before.”

  
Alistair looked as though someone had punched him in his stomach, as though he had had the wind knocked out of him. His mouth hung open slightly, and his posture deflated, his shoulders tugged toward the ground and his spine bowing in acknowledgement of some sort of defeat. Deona, even in her condition, felt the need to explain herself and comfort her husband, but before she knew what was happening, a small cry came from her mouth and her hands flew to protect her womb from the pain that she could not stop.

  
Alistair, her vocalization forcing him to deal with the world, dropped to his knees in front of her again, his expression hardened by concentration and resolve.

  
“No more,” he decided, pulling Deona’s damp hair from out of her face and then rubbing her back. “We’re not going to try for any more children.”

“We need to,” she gritted out, her grey eyes boring into his brown depths. “It’s the responsibility of a queen.” After another moment of tense silence, her tone softened. “And I want...”

  
It was with this almost-admission that Deona’s cold control collapsed. She had tried to convince herself that it wasn’t true, after the first miscarriage. She had tried to convince herself that she had never wanted children, but now she could face the truth. She had rarely been allowed to choose anything in her life. Her father had trained her for battle. Her mother had trained her for court. Her tutors had trained her for politics. The Wardens had trained her to end the Blight. She had chosen none of those things. She wanted children. She had never wanted to be a Warden. She had only chosen to the Wardens to avoid death, and now that choice was killing her. She broke down, beginning to sob uncontrollably, even more desolate than the first time her body had rejected her child.

  
“I want a child,” she whimpered as she damned the Wardens, as she damned Duncan for giving her a choice which was not a choice at all. She had happiness now, but only the most bitter and dangerous happiness one could have, that of assured solitude, and it was all because of the taint that flowed through her bones and now through her genetics. She wanted to see Alistair’s beaming smile upon seeing his child. She wanted to not only protect her country with her arms and armor but also with what she could offer as a mother, but a dragon she could slay, not her own corrupt body.

  
Her sobbing continued as Alistair’s face softened, and he did his best to make her comfortable, moving her soiled dress out from underneath her feet and pulling her hair back into a what would have been endearingly bad attempt at the knot she normally wore, had Deona not been so thoroughly heartbroken. He stood up, kissed her forehead, and disappeared from the room. She heard him walk to the middle of the bedroom and then stop. She heard rustling, a lot of rustling, and then Alistair returned with one of the furs from the bed. He draped it over his wife’s shoulders and adjusted it so as to cover as much of her as it could, both to keep the chill of the spring night out, but also for the soft discretion it could provide.

  
“I’m going to get a healer,” Alistair said softly, no longer unsure of his actions.

  
“It’s too late for the child,” Deona tried to explain once again.

  
“No, I’m going to get a healer for you,” he insisted, meeting her gaze with tender but determined insistence. “You don’t need to suffer like this. I don’t care if getting you help means that people will know. We’ll find a way to fix this. I promise.”

  
Alistair kissed her forehead, leaving Deona to watch as her husband left the gloomy-grimy room and strode out into the colder and more bleak parts of the castle to who know where that he could find a healer at this unholy hour. She watched him leave, tears still running down her face listlessly as she stared at the stone walls, thinking of all the bloodshed they must had seen, thinking of all the Couslands who had fallen on this land. Her husband, the king, of course, could leave the room and find whatever assistance he could garner, but she could do nothing other than remain in the dankness shivering, her body tormenting itself, her fingers hooked into the pelt like claws, the peripherals of her eyes fading to black amidst the pain, her mind unable to imagine anything other than the suffering that haunted her.


End file.
